Enterprises are finding it increasingly difficult to stay abreast with the rapidly evolving technology platforms. That is, software and hardware upgrades are commonplace for an information technology (IT) infrastructure of an enterprise and maintaining a state of the art infrastructure is costly, time consuming, and distracts from the business of an enterprise. But, there is no avoiding technology and the enterprise's business is intimately dependent on its underlying infrastructure. So, an enterprise is in a catch-22 position and is forced to maintain a costly IT infrastructure.
To remedy these concerns a new technology has been gaining acceptance in the industry. This technology is referred to as “cloud computing.” The term “cloud” is used as a metaphor for how the Internet is depicted in diagrams and is used as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure, which is being concealed with cloud computing. Cloud computing is often defined as computing capabilities that provide an abstraction between computing resources and the underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
With cloud computing and cloud storage, enterprises are recognizing an economy of scale in migrating portions of their data centers to various cloud providers. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is currently the most common mechanism for providing cloud computing and storage. Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are focused more on providing specific services or specific platform services rather than raw infrastructure.
Additionally, regulatory compliance is a critical part of today's enterprise operations. Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is fast becoming the best practice model for enterprises to manage their risk and compliance throughout their data centers and other business processes.
These regulatory concerns have become a road block to enterprise acceptance of cloud computing. The enterprise wants more control and management capabilities of any partial or full cloud implementation within the enterprise because without such assurances, the enterprise may: run afoul with regulatory agencies, unduly expose the enterprise to liability, and even jeopardize valued customer relationships.
Thus, improved techniques for cloud control and management are needed.